There’s been a lot of conversation around net neutrality recently, sparked by the US Federal Communications Commission‘s (FCC) fight to gut the laws and open the floodgates for internet service providers (ISPs) to completely piss all over the online world as we know it.
Essentially, net neutrality is the idea that everything on the internet should be available to everyone equally at the same speeds. If the FCC successfully change the laws, ISPs will be able to charge customers for access to their favourite sites and basically funnel you into what they want you to see.
We did a bit of an explainer on the issue yesterday that you can check out at the link below if you’re still a little confused about it all.
What it all boils down to is ISPs having the freedom to cut the internet into seperate slices, forcing you to pay for access to each one or slowing down your speeds based on their own biases. The fake image below is a good indication of how scary things could get under this model.
Fuck that straight to Hell. About a month ago, a heavily circulated tweet by Ro Khanna claimed to be another glimpse into what internet plans might be like under a post-net neutrality US, albeit, a slightly inaccurate one.
In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages. pic.twitter.com/TlLYGezmv6
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 27, 2017
It’s true that, like us, Portugal doesn’t have laws protecting net neutrality, and while the image above looks fucking horrifying, it lacks context. According to The Verge, the packages above are add-ons to a general mobile plan which will still let you access all of the listed apps, even if you don’t opt in.
The idea is that if you use a particular type of app a lot, you can purchase an add-on to get more data for that particular category, like music or social. Now, assuming the ISP hasn’t changed the size of the general data offered in the plan or increased the price for it, this isn’t all that bad. It’s adding options rather than limiting access or jacking up prices.
But again, we don’t have that context to make a definitive call on this particular situation. Similar images have popped up from our pals over in New Zealand.
Hey, USA! In New Zealand we don’t have #NetNeutrality. What I’m about to link and post to you is real. This could be what’s in your future. https://t.co/Kye4w0e6zh pic.twitter.com/l2OOyp8C0S
— Elaine, The Spooky 🦊 (@Kitsunelaine) November 22, 2017
It looks completely fucked and it certainly has the potential to be that way, but again, these look like optional add-ons rather than paywalls. If they were to throttle your access based on what you were paying for, that’s where net neutrality comes into play. Having to pay extra just to access certain sites or apps would be a violation of the neutrality currently protected by law in the US.
Of course, if the US does ditch their current laws and cut the internet into cable-like subscriptions, there’s not much stopping NZ or our own ISPs from doing the same. Seeing as they’ve already got the above examples ready to go, it would be incredibly easy for them to implement.
Here’s hoping that clusterfuck doesn’t happen, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
